


Stories Like Ours (Collected Works)

by almcvay1



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Person of Interest (TV), The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:39:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6697741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almcvay1/pseuds/almcvay1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angsty, fluffy, unrelated ficlets, mostly cross-posted from Tumblr. I may add to these from time to time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wild Horses

**Author's Note:**

> Please note I own none of the characters. If I did, I'd have treated them better. Dedicated to the Gutterbugs.

**Wild Horses**

The cool damp air of Seattle greeted Lizzie as she stepped off the Gulfstream at the SeaTac corporate terminal. It had been a year since she had been in the United States, a year running all over the globe, a year of gunshots and bodies scattered like forgotten chess pieces across the board. A warm hand on her shoulder gave her momentary comfort. Red was her partner in, well, crime, for the last year, and her lover for the last six months. They had finally succeeded in their goal; both of them had been cleared of all charges. She ached a little at the thought of having to leave him. They had been so comfortable together, from the very first. Usually so awkward with someone new, they fit together like pieces of a well-loved puzzle. But it was time to get on with their lives, and they both knew that neither could move on with the other still there. But if it had to end, let it be like this; as equals.

Lizzie turned to find her smiling at him and her own lips curve up in response. She could never resist the Reddington charm when he turned it on. This is no exception.

“Are you ready for this, Lizzie?”

“Yes. It’s time.” She moved into his space, resting her head on his shoulder and enjoying the feeling of his arms around her one more time. She promised herself she wouldn’t drag it out, better to make it clean and fast, like the cut of a knife. When he spoke again, she could feel the words as well as hear them.

“Thank you for at least letting me get you a decent place to live. You know I hate the thought of you in cheap motel rooms.”  The apartment he found for her was a block away from Elliott Bay, a safe, secure building in a good neighborhood. He paid the two-year lease up front and wouldn’t let her argue with him about it. She smiled into his coat collar, inhaling the faint scent of his cologne. The smell of him always made her whole body ache with need.

“I didn’t realize I had a choice, Red. I’m almost sure you did the thing and then told me about it after the fact.”

“Well, easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

It was past time. If she stood here any longer with him she would begin to question everything. She loved him. She knew he loved her. Lizzie took a deep breath and pulled the shards of her heart together, stepped back and gave him her best smile. It felt skewed on her face, and she could see he wasn’t buying it. His hand came up to cradle her cheek, trace the tear that slid down unbidden.

“Our lives were meant to intersect, Lizzie, but never to merge. You have a bright future and hopefully a long and happy life in front of you. You are without a doubt one of the strongest, most brilliant women I have ever known. I look forward to seeing what you make of your opportunities.” He was smiling at her, full of admiration, even pride. His eyes, under the shade of his fedora, were incandescent with love, as though she couldn’t see his heart breaking.

Lizzie turned into his palm and kissed the center, gently. He was right. She shrugged her tote up onto her shoulder and grabbed the handle of the wheeled suitcase that had been unloaded from the plane. Two bags were all her life amounted to at the moment, but she would change that. If Red had taught her anything it was that if you don’t like the circumstances, you change them.

“I’m going to make you proud, Red. I promise you that.”

“You already have, Lizzie. You always do.” Her breath caught as her throat closed, tears threatening to choke her. She turned before he could see her break down. That wasn’t how she wanted him to remember her. She wanted to leave him smiling. When she was halfway to the terminal, she turned back and blew him a kiss. He laughed and returned it.

Their world ended not with a bang or a whimper, but a laugh and a smile. Not a bad way to go at all.


	2. Miracle

**Miracle**

Lizzie slid down the wall as she saw her life being dissected on national television. There was no way, no way in the world, that she could ever hope to triumph in this situation. She was just a person against a massive machine. Reddington knelt down in front of her, taking her chilled hands in his. 

“You will be okay, Lizzie. It looks bad, I know. But we can get through this.”

Her blue eyes were filled with despair as she studied his face in the dim light. He looked tired. She shifted over a bit so he could sit next to her against the wall. She found some comfort in the warmth of his broad shoulders next to hers.

“How, Red? Are we going to pray for miracles? Because I think that might be what it takes.”

He sat quietly for a moment, a half-smile just ghosting across his lips.

“You know, Lizzie, a wise man once said that “Sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles.”

Lizzie rolled her eyes at him. Trust Red to make her laugh.

“Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me," she replied. She would cherish the look of surprise on his face for a long, long time.

“What? Did you think I’d never watched Doctor Who, Red?"


	3. Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first chapter from a Blacklist/Person of Interest crossover I started. I may even finish it someday, but it stands on its own for now.

**Numbers**

The man who called himself Harold Finch removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes in the darkened room of the library where he was working. It was well past one in the morning and he knew his eyes were tired. He had hoped his eyes were playing tricks when he saw the person who was assigned the number that the machine had given him. But he knew it was not a trick. The machine never lied and it was never wrong. He needed to make a phone call.

Raymond Reddington never slept more than perhaps four or so hours in an evening. If the nightmares didn’t wake him, the worries pressing on his mind would do so. Trying to keep Elizabeth Keen safe and out of harm’s way was exhausting work. Especially when she seemed determined to pursue those paths that would place the target squarely on her own back. When the phone rang, initially he just stared at it. This was the only phone he kept with him always. The only one he never tossed or disabled. The one he never wanted to ring and breathed a sigh of relief for each day it did not.

“Yes, Mr. Finch?”

“I’m sorry to call so late, Mr. Reddington. But I thought you would want to know. Ms. Keen’s number has come up.”

Red sighed heavily, even as he could feel the chilly fingers of fate creeping along his spine. He knew that sooner or later everyone’s number would come up, but while he was able, he would keep Lizzie alive. It was funny the things that love could make one do.

He could hear Harold Finch talking, he had tuned him out for a moment, but now he focused.

“Mr. Reddington, I know you prefer your own people, but I would really like to send you some help. Consider them…reinforcements, if you will. “

“It won’t be necessary, Harold. I’m sure Dembe and I can handle the threat.”

He hung up the phone and took a swig of the remaining scotch in his glass. It seemed no sooner that he pulled Lizzie away from one hangman’s noose that a new one was fashioned for her.

Harold Finch didn’t take offense at the abrupt silence that met his protests. Raymond Reddington didn’t trust easily, and that trust that he did extend was fragile. He had earned that trust carefully, quietly, over the span of years. When he had first begun this project to help the irrelevant numbers the machine gave him, he began to notice the numbers that came up repeatedly. Raymond Reddington was such a number, made more mysterious by his utter lack of any digital footprint. It had been almost impossible to track the man down or learn much about him, until of course, he hacked the FBI database. Finch had been hard pressed to sort through all the speculation and government vagueness to look for the patterns. There were always patterns, Harold knew, because patterns were normal, part of human nature really. And so one man, alone with a computer, managed to do what the entire FBI could not. He located Raymond Reddington.

The memory of that first meeting could still make Harold’s nerves stand on edge. He hadn’t had a partner at the time, so he was left to do the intervention on his own. He had waited patiently at a table in the tiny noodle shop in Chinatown that he knew Reddington would visit. Because he almost always did. Whatever was here was something important to him. Still he was somewhat unprepared for the man in the three piece suit of pale linen, a tan fedora pulled low over eyes shaded by sunglasses. He was trimmer than Finch remembered from the few photos that he had seen, but there was no mistaking the man they called the Concierge of Crime. Harold ordered another green tea and waited for the threat to reveal itself.

It didn’t take long, Reddington ordered a tea for himself and his companion, a taller, muscular man with skin the color of coffee. They sat at a booth, facing the door, backs to the wall, which, given Reddington’s occupation, was probably the best strategy. Harold knew that it was likely that both he and his friend were armed, one would have to be extremely foolish to try to attack him directly. So Harold kept his eyes on the move, looking for the furtive, out of place thing that would give it away.  Reddington’s bodyguard pulled out a cell phone and Finch quickly blue-jacked it and sent a message. Brief, a simple warning that there was danger on the approach. The two men looked around warily after the message was received. Finch held his book, trying his best to blend in with the other patrons. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the staff uncap a glass vial and pour several drops of it into two cups. Poison made sense, of course. He sent another message to Reddington. Even if they didn’t believe that the tea was poisoned, they may become suspicious enough to leave. He was proven correct as the men stood, leaving cash on the table and leaving swiftly. Harold sighed with relief, one crisis averted.

He walked carefully back to his library fortress, the characteristic stiffness of his spine only slowing him a bit. It had been a good day’s work, but he hoped he could find another partner before Reddington’s number came up again. His nerves were not meant for this sort of stress. The next morning he visited his usual beverage cart in the park, nothing further on his mind than the soothing warmth of the Sencha green tea he favored. He didn’t see the man in the fedora until he was seated next to him and felt the hard muzzle of a gun digging into his ribcage.

“I’m not sure who you are or how you knew about the noodle shop yesterday, but I do love stories. And I bet the one you’re going to tell will be absolutely fascinating.” The gun prodded his ribs and the bodyguard hustled him to his feet and into a nearby sedan. Reddington removed his hat and glasses, and Harold was surprised by how affable his expression appeared. Trusting this man was a very heavy gamble for Finch; Reddington was at the very least a murderer, and at worst, a traitor to his country. The gun remained trained on him by hands that were steady, so it seemed Finch would have to roll the dice this time.

“So, entertain me.”


	4. The Girl Who Lived

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blacklist/Doctor Who crossover ficlet

**The Girl Who Lived**

Raymond Reddington sat in the leather chair and stared at the fire. The tumbler of scotch in his hand was empty and as tempted as he was to pour a little more of the liquid painkiller, he didn’t really want to be bothered. Thoughts of Lizzie consumed him, much like the fire consumed its fuel. Grief was not at all a new emotion for him. He had loved and lost and mourned before. He had an entire life that had been laid to waste, and the hole that had carved inside him had never been filled. Lizzie seemed destined to become another void inside of him and he wondered if there was even anything left of his heart and soul anymore. He felt…hollow inside.

The grinding, wheezing noise broke the silence with which he had surrounded himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the slow materialization of the blue police phone box. It seemed Dembe would never stop looking out for him, no matter what happened.

The man who came out of the box looked much the same as he always had. But as he came to sit across from him beside the fire, Red noticed the small things. The bowtie was gone, replaced by a cravat. The usual jovial smile was absent, and the solemn expression made Red wonder what he had seen, what happened since the last time. He had always known the Doctor was much older than he appeared; this was the first time he had seen him wear his age so obviously. He was not grieving alone tonight.

“Can you…? You know what, never mind. I already know the answer. I’ve always known the answer.” Red rubbed his eyes, trying to ease the tired, dry feeling.

The man who was called the Doctor smiled ever so slightly. Of all the humans he had known, and he had known quite a few, Raymond Reddington had been one of the few to accept the limits of time travel and the fact that time could not always be re-written.

“I know she was precious to you, Red. I know you loved her. And she loved you. “

“Did she? After everything? I know she said it, but I just can’t stop thinking that I never told her everything. I never explained myself. I hate that she may have left this life never knowing how much I loved her.” The glass in his hand threatened to crack under the force of his fingers. The Doctor reached over and pried it carefully from his grasp. He carried it to the table by the window and poured a healthy measure of the liquor. He sipped it cautiously; this body had never really adjusted to the taste of alcohol.  But if ever a night called for a drink, it would be this night. Red had lost his Lizzie, his own family, the Ponds, lost somewhere in time, forever out of his reach.  The Doctor took another swallow of the liquor and let the burn of scotch merge with the pain of heartache.

The Doctor sat back down across from the heartbroken man he had kept a weather eye on since they met so many years ago. He once thought he had never met anyone with such a genius for trouble as Raymond Reddington, and thus far, he had not been proven wrong. Even Rory the Roman could not equal him in getting into life-threatening scrapes. The thought of Rory made the Doctor wish he had poured some more scotch.

“Who have you lost, Doctor? I can see it on your face, plain as day.”

“My family. Amy and Rory. They’re not dead, exactly, but lost. I lost them. “

“I’m terribly sorry, Doctor. I know your friends are so special to you.”

“I keep losing them, Red. They get lost, or they die or they decide to leave and I wish I could stop…needing them. Every time I tell myself, never again. But I always do, and this always happens.”

“Yes. I tried to tell myself that once as well. In fact, I managed for almost twenty years to keep myself away from her. But then I couldn’t do it anymore, I had to come back, I had to save Lizzie. And then it turns out that I’m the one who doomed her from the start.”

The Doctor nodded in sympathy. Being a time-traveler wasn’t the same as being able to see the future. There were always a million little elements, tiny grains of sand, and by changing one thing, you precipitate the very tragedy you meant to prevent.

He bounced to his feet, extending his hand to Red. He couldn’t save Lizzie Keen. But maybe he could give Red just a little bit of hope.

“Come here, Red. I have something to show you.”

Red found himself pulled into the Tardis. He had been inside once before, but it never failed to amaze him, the sheer size of it.

“I see you’ve redecorated.”

“Yes, a bit,” The Doctor whirled around the central control module, pressing and flipping; Red would never even begin to understand how it all worked.

“I don’t like it.” He allowed a brief smile at the glare the Doctor sent his way.  It seemed colder inside than the last time he had seen. All gray metal and white light. Perhaps it was a reflection of the Doctor at present.  Alone and trying desperately to shut off the feelings that were responsible for his pain.

The whooshing, wheezing sounds were accompanied by a feeling not unlike air turbulence upon landing.

“Where are we, Doctor?”

“Baltimore, Maryland. The fourteenth of April, in the year 2026.”

Red stepped out on to a suburban sidewalk. The street was tidy, lined with trees and generously sized houses with well-kept yards. He followed the Doctor down the street and together they made their way through the hedges to a backyard where a birthday party was in progress. He could see Dembe’s daughter and her husband setting out paper plates and silverware. Samar and Aram emerged from the kitchen door with a cake, topped with ten candles. Seeing them grabbed Red’s heart in a fierce grip, that’s why the date had seemed familiar. Today Agnes would be ten years old. This was her birthday party.

He sank to his knees beside the Doctor, still hidden in the shrubs. His chest ached and his throat burned with unshed tears as he watched Cooper and even Donald Ressler appear with brightly colored gifts. Then he saw her, and if it was possible for time to stop, Red knew that it surely had. Agnes, it had to be her, came around the corner with another girl, Dembe’s granddaughter, only a few years older. She was small, with her mother’s dark hair and porcelain complexion. He watched with tears streaming from his eyes as she greeted her family, for that’s what he saw here, a family. Born from tragedy, but strong and loving.

The Doctor knelt beside him in the grass, watching as the candles were lit and the song, off-key as always, was sung. Agnes smiled and laughed and made her wish, closing her blue eyes. Red felt his heart skip a beat when he saw Lizzie’s eyes in that heart-shaped face. She opened her gifts with the relish of a happy child and Red found himself smiling as he watched her excitement. The last box was bigger than the others, and she had to stand on the bench to open it. Samar opened the card attached to the top of the box and Red strained to hear what she said.

“For a special girl who is ten today. This belonged to your mother and I thought you might like to have it. She loved you very much and I love you too. Happy birthday, love, Red.”  Samar’s voice cracked on the last word and they all watched as the wrapping was stripped away.

The music box glowed in the sunlight and Red felt himself go weak, as though even his bones had been dissolved by his grief. It was the music box he had restored for Lizzie so long ago, and was now being given to her daughter. It hurt his heart to see it, to remember how she had wept in his arms that night, but there was the brilliant joy of seeing her child carefully wind it, closing her eyes as the song played for her. There was something here he needed, a feeling that he couldn’t name, but he had it now. It was time to go.

The Doctor was silent as they returned through time and space to the room that still seemed to be filled with sorrow. Red understood now, though. And it was something he had always known.

“You just needed a reminder, Red. It’s all a mixed bag, right? Good parts and bad, but one doesn’t cancel out the other. In fact, you can’t have one without the other. It’s taken me over a thousand years to learn that.”

Red sat once more in the chair by the fire. He could feel the sadness inside of him, but it didn’t seem as cold or painful anymore. It felt like the arms of an old friend, wrapped around his heart. He looked up to see the Doctor smiling at him. He needed to thank him, but the words wouldn’t quite come. But as they looked at each other in the dying firelight, he thought that the Doctor, perhaps, understood what he couldn’t say out loud.

“The ones we love never really leave us. Not as long as we remember them. They live forever.”


End file.
